The “Delegation of Higher Education in Taiwan,” led by Mr. Lu Mu-lin, Deputy Minister of Education, returned to Taiwan with satisfactory results on Nov. 4th. The delegation was constituted of representatives from ten universities, including National Taiwan University (NTU), National Chiao Tung University (NCTU), National Sun Yat-Sen University, National Cheng Kung University, National Tsing Hua University, National Central University, National Taiwan Normal University, Tamkang University, Fu Jen Catholic University, and Ming Chuan University. The representatives of Tamkang University (TKU) are Sung Mei-hua, Dean of College of Foreign Languages and Literatures, and the chair of Dept. of French Tsai Shu-ling. They went to seven key universities in French, Belgium, and Holland with brochures and publicity materials of our school, and received an enthusiastic welcome.

The delegation was sponsored by Ministry of Education, which appointed NTU and NCTU to prepare and arrange the whole project. The representatives visited many well-known universities in Eastern and Western Europe to propagate Taiwan’s higher education and academic research, and to attract European students to study in Taiwan. The scheme was mainly divided into two fields: “Science” and “Liberal Arts.” The representatives are the vice-presidents, the deans of Office of Academic Affairs, the deans of Office of Student Affairs, the deans of Office of General Affairs, or the deans of the related colleges from all the participating universities.

The delegation are separated into three sections according to the destination: Eastern Europe, Western Europe, and Canada. The first two sections respectively visited French, Belgium, Ukraine, Poland, and the Czech Republic etc. The schools they visited included some sister schools of TKU like Universite De Paris-Sorbonne in French, Universite catholique de Louvain in Belgium, University of Warsaw in Poland, and Charles University in the Czech Republic, and the representatives of TKU got very ardent greetings in these schools.

Dean Mei-hua Sung indicated that the purpose of this visit is to propagate the policies, advantages, and distinguishing features of Taiwan’s higher education, to strengthen the academic communication between both sides, and to carry out the details of association and cooperation. Because our government hopes that there will be more foreign students coming to Taiwan to study, the Ministry of Education and many universities in Taiwan begin to offer high scholarship to attract foreign students.

In this mission, our school not only participated the delegation directly and contributed a lot to the distinguished results, but also made a deal with Universite of Jean Moulin Lyon3 of French and Utrecht University of Holland about the follow-up plans of cooperation.